Health Insurance and the Constitution's Commerce Clause

[loCAtek]

Thus far, Democrat-appointed judges have upheld the law, and Republican-appointed judges have struck it down.

Thanks for that Andrew, my chuckle of the day,.

Your system was constructed by a barrel of monkeys fighting over a typewriter.

That was the complete works of Shakespeare...

[Crackpot]

just to fix the damn page error

[Long Run]

The next round of decisions begins. It is worth noting that this was a split decision, 2-1, with a concurrence by one of the majority judges. This illustrates just how "close" this decision will ultimately be.

In the first Court of Appeals decision to address the issue, the Sixth Circuit has upheld the constitutionality of the individual mandate provisions of health care reform (which require most individuals to have health coverage beginning January 1, 2014 or pay a penalty). The trial court had found that the individual mandate was a valid exercise of Congress’s authority under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution on two independent grounds: that it regulates economic activity (i.e., decisionmaking on how to pay for health care) that substantially affects the interstate health care market, and that it is essential to Congress’s larger regulation of the interstate insurance market (see our article). The trial court did not reach the issue of whether the individual mandate was permissible as a tax.

A Sixth Circuit panel of three judges affirmed the trial court’s Commerce Clause holding on both grounds (with one judge concurring in a separate opinion and one judge dissenting). Addressing the question of whether the non-purchase of health insurance is “economic activity,” the court pointed out that since most individuals will use health care whether or not they have health insurance, “attempting to cover the cost of health care needs by self-insuring is no less economic than the activity of purchasing an insurance plan.” In finding the mandate to be an essential part of a broader economic regulatory scheme, the court noted that without the individual mandate, other health care reform provisions (such as the elimination of preexisting condition exclusions) would increase the incentive for individuals to delay purchasing insurance until they need health care and thus undercut Congress’s larger regulation of the health care delivery and health insurance markets. The court also addressed the tax issue, finding (in an opinion delivered by the concurring judge and joined by the dissenting judge) that the individual mandate is not a tax, and thus it cannot be upheld under Congress’s taxing authority.

http://www.ebia.com/WeeklyArchives/CourtCases/20586